


Inconvenience

by Khashana, read by Khashana (Khashana)



Series: Disrespect!verse [4]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: ADHD, ADHD Aang, ADHD/Autism Solidarity, Ableism, Alternate Universe - College/University, Autistic Zuko, Child Abuse, Fic and podfic together, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Ozai’s A+ Parenting, Podfic, Podfic Length: 10-20 Minutes, internalized ableism, plus Katara and Sokka, team avatar is the Neurodivergent Squad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:00:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24888769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khashana/pseuds/Khashana, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khashana/pseuds/read%20by%20Khashana
Summary: Aang and Zuko aren’t always very good at validating themselves. But that’s okay, because they’ll just validate each other instead.The birth of Aang and Zuko’s ride-or-die friendship.
Relationships: Aang & Zuko (Avatar), The Gaang & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: Disrespect!verse [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1782586
Comments: 95
Kudos: 824





	Inconvenience

**Author's Note:**

> Well, we got Aang’s POV, plus a light dusting of Zuko’s tragic backstory. More of that to come later. I had it written out in more detail, but it didn’t fit with the rest of the story tone-wise.
> 
> [Podfic here](https://khashanakalashtar.wordpress.com/portfolio/inconvenience/)

The knock sounds at the door and Aang jumps. Shit. Every time.

He hustles to open the door and smiles apologetically at Katara, who already has her phone out. Aang doesn’t know whether he’s embarrassed or grateful that she’s expecting him not to be ready. He races around his room to get dressed, out to the bathroom to brush his teeth, and back to his room to find socks and toss his laptop into his bag. Kuzon ignores him, even more used to this now than Katara.

At last he has everything together, and he opens his door and shoves his feet into his shoes. Katara stands up from where she’s been sitting on the floor, playing on her phone.

“Ready?”

“Yep!”

“Giant scar covering half his face” did _not_ prepare Aang to meet Zuko. He’d thought, because why wouldn’t he, that Sokka meant a scar from a _blade_ , maybe a sword accident. But that’s a _burn._

It’s not a little one, either, like the ones dotting his arms. Aang doesn’t want to _ask_ Zuko, so he’s just been puzzling it out himself. What could possibly cause damage so intense, but in such a localized area?

So maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised to find out the truth.

Maybe he should have been expecting it, but he isn’t.

Aang is determined that _this_ week, he will spread out his English paper over the week instead of staying up all night every Wednesday. He reads the assignment over again, opens a blank doc, and titles it. He’s already decided to write about the use of light symbolism in The Glass Menagerie. He opens the book and reads the first line.

_This is our father who left us a long time ago. He was a telephone man who fell in love with long distances; he gave up his job with the telephone company and skipped the light fantastic out of town._

“Hey Katara, didn’t you say your dad was deployed when you were a kid?”

“Yes.”

“But your mom died when you were little.”

“We lived with our Gran-Gran while Dad was gone,” explains Sokka.

“That must have been hard,” says Aang, chest clenching. “But he came back, right?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“I never knew my parents,” starts Aang. But Zuko is flipping this pen between his fingers, making this little clicking noise, and Aang completely loses his train of thought.

“Zuko, can you not make that sound with the pen? It’s hard to concentrate.”

“Aang, seriously? Don’t be like that,” starts Katara, but Zuko just swaps out the pen for a different one and continues his fidget, now silently.

“Thanks,” says Aang, relieved, and tosses Zuko a small smile. “Now, what was I talking about?

“You never knew your parents,” prompts Katara.

“Oh yeah. I grew up in a boy’s home. Our foster dad was pretty strict, but he was also really nice.”

Katara says, “And you live with your uncle, right Zuko?”

And Zuko answers, casual as you please, no change in expression—“Yeah, well, my dad’s the kind of bastard who lights your face on fire if you disagree with him, so.”

Aang doesn’t want to know. He’s not sure why he asks, with a definite note of hysteria in his voice, “Your _dad_ did that to you?”

“Yes.” Zuko pauses to type something. “Shoved my face into a lit stove burner. Then he took me to the hospital and told everyone it was an accident.”

“And they _believed_ that?” Katara has her hands over her mouth.

“Wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention to anyone else,” Zuko points out. “I told them it was an accident, too, when they asked. I do remember that.”

Sokka apparently can’t take it anymore, though at least he doesn’t look like his cat’s been murdered the way he did the last time they found out something about Zuko.

“Okay, so I honestly can’t tell from your aura of nonchalance if you know this or not, so I’m just gonna ask—you’re aware that’s _child abuse_ , right?”

“I am _now,_ ” says Zuko, and that isn’t horrifying at all.

Aang stares at the paper and tries to wrap his head around writing it. He opens Facebook. It’s fine to check it for just a second. It’s fine, the thing isn’t due tomorrow.

The next thing he knows, Sokka’s suggesting they go to dinner.

He starts the paper at midnight on Wednesday.

“Are you and Katara dating?” Zuko asks him once.

“What?” stutters Aang. “I—no! She’s just a friend. Why do you ask?” God, how obvious must his crush be?

“You always show up to Sokka’s together.”

“Oh, that.” Aang feels himself redden. “I’d never get there on time if she didn’t pick me up.”

“Sooooo…” Sokka drawls over dinner one day. “ _Guess_ whose birthday is on Saturday?”

“Yours?” guesses Aang without difficulty.

“Ding, ding! Fifty points to Hufflepuff! I thought we could all get tickets to Star Wars. Who’s in?”

Aang and Katara are very much in.

But on the way out of the dining hall, Zuko says,” _Aang,_ ” and Aang hangs back.

“What’s up?”

“I can’t do movies in the theater. It’s way too overstimulating.”

Aang is pleasantly surprised in one way, and also not at all surprised in another, that it’s him Zuko is telling this to instead of Sokka. He’s also kicking himself for not having thought of it on his own.

“Earplugs?” he suggests. “That’s what I always do.”

Zuko shakes his head. “It’s the visual as much as the auditory, for me.” He looks miserable, as though he’s ruining Sokka’s birthday.

“Okay. How about you meet us for dinner afterward? Somewhere low-key. Or would it be better if I got Sokka to pick something else entirely?”

“No, that would be—I’d feel really guilty. Dinner’s good.”

“You want me to tell Sokka, or do you want to do it?”

“Can you?” Zuko meets his eyes for a second, and Aang suddenly feels _anguished_ for him. “Tell him I’m sorry. I hate being an inconvenience.”

Aang hugs him. Zuko stiffens, and Aang lets go at once. “Sorry! Was that not okay?” He’s given Zuko hugs before, but that doesn’t mean it’s always welcome.

“It’s fine. I just wasn’t expecting it.”

Aang telegraphs his moves this time, and Zuko slowly relaxes into it.

“You’re not an inconvenience,” Aang tells him firmly. “You’re our friend.”

Sokka is as empathetic as Aang himself, sometimes, and he looks stricken when Aang explains.

“We can do something else,” he insists. “I don’t want to leave him out.”

“He doesn’t want that,” Aang rushes to add. “He already feels guilty.”

Sokka gets this _look_ on his face.

“Will you believe this?” he announces at the dinner table the following night. “They’re sold out of Star Wars tickets!” He waves his phone for emphasis.

“Really?” says Zuko.

“We’ll just have to go next weekend instead.” He pockets his phone decisively. “Dinner this weekend, movie next.”

Though nothing in his voice indicates he’s lying, it’s a little too convenient. But Zuko doesn’t seem to have noticed, or maybe he has and he appreciates how Sokka’s reframed it. Aang watches his shoulders relax and a small smile creep onto his face, and he decides he can live with the white lie if it makes Zuko look this _relieved._ They’ll just have to make sure they don’t get into this situation a second time.

It’s the end of November, and Aang’s listening in horror as Professor Feng tells them that their final will be a thirty-page comparative research paper about two of the stories they’ve read, and it will be worth a third of their grade.

Mother _fucker._

It shouldn’t hit so hard, he thinks. He _knew_ that this was coming. He’s known since way at the beginning of class, when they were going over the syllabus, only Aang was definitely better at _doing things_ in high school and it was never going to be something he looked forward to, but it didn’t seem like the looming iceberg it does now.

He doesn’t eat much dinner, and can’t even be bothered to get dessert, which Katara notices.

“Are you okay, Aang?”

“I’m probably going to fail English,” he admits.

“What? No, you’re not! What’re you at?

“C average. But the final’s a third of my grade and it’s thirty pages, and I can’t write a thirty-page paper the night before, and I can’t write papers any time _but_ the night before anymore.”

“Of course you can. Just set yourself a schedule, and stick to it.”

He looks at her in mute helplessness.

“That’s not helpful, Katara,” Zuko says. “You might as well be telling him he can fly if he just tries hard enough. That’s not how executive dysfunction works.”

“Execu-what?”

“Executive dysfunction. You have depression, you’ve probably experienced it. Haven’t you ever just laid in bed trying to talk yourself into getting up, and not managing it for like an hour?”

“Yes,” she says, fixing him with a confused look. “But Aang doesn’t have depression. Do you, Aang?” She looks worried, now, like he might have been hiding it from her this entire time.

“Depression isn’t the only thing that causes it,” says Zuko, and stands up, planting both hands on the table and very effectively making himself impossible to ignore.”Aang. You’re not going to fail English. I’m not going to let you.”

Zuko follows him home, silent until Aang introduces him to Kuzon, and helps him break the assignment up into chunks, setting alarms on Aang’s computer for each deadline and copying them into his own phone.

“So you need three secondary sources. Bring me the names of four possible ones by next week. You don’t have to have read them, just find them. Then send me a first draft by _this_ day. As shitty as it needs to be. Doesn’t have to be thirty pages, just make your argument. We’ll come back to the calendar then and figure out what benchmarks to set next. The goal is to get to a draft you can turn in by _this_ day.”

It sounds _doable_ when he puts it like that.

“You’re going to miss at least some of these deadlines.”

“ _Thanks._ ”

“No, listen. You’re going to miss some of them. And I’ll glare at you until you get them turned in anyway.” He demonstrates. It’s…scarily effective how motivating it is.

“If that doesn’t work, I’ll get Katara or Sokka to make puppy eyes at you.”

“How are you doing this?” Aang blurts. It isn’t quite what he wanted to say, but Zuko seems to get it.

“Practice. Also it’s easier to do when it’s someone else’s task. This isn’t as much of a problem for me.”

“I still feel like I should be able to do it myself,” Aang admits. “It’s not like I don’t know what pieces go into writing a paper. I shouldn’t need you to break it up _for_ me.”

“Fuck that shit,” says Zuko bluntly, and it startles a laugh out of Aang. “If _I’m_ not an inconvenience, _neither are you._ ”

And that’s—that’s not what Aang said, except it kind of is, and Aang feels a little like he’s just been punched in the chest.

“I don’t have ADHD, and I’m further from the situation than you are, this isn’t nearly as hard for me to do for you as it is for you to do for yourself,” Zuko continues. Aang isn’t surprised, really, that Zuko knows, is apparently so sure that he didn’t even feel the need to ask.

Bringing it up makes him feel like he can ask, “You’re autistic, right?”

Zuko arches an eyebrow. “Yes. Sokka didn’t tell you?”

Aang feels a wave of fondness for Sokka. “No, he just told us you weren’t great with conversational turn-taking or eye contact, and that we shouldn’t read into it. That was enough for me to guess, though.”

Zuko doesn’t seem to know what to do with this information.

Katara catches him before oceanography class to capture his hands and say very earnestly, “I did some research on executive dysfunction, and I’m so sorry for what I said, and if I ever made you feel bad any other time. Is there anything I can do to help?”

Aang forgives her at once, and as she hugs him, he thinks that maybe, if all his friends are willing to follow Zuko’s example, this finals season might actually be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> Contrary to popular depiction, survivors of child abuse in my experience are extremely matter-of-fact when talking about their abuse.
> 
> Watch me accidentally STILL have the plot be about Aang’s friends helping him learn different subjects. IDK how Zuko got English though.
> 
> We’re just gonna continue the trend of all of these ending in hugs. So far Keep is still the only one that doesn’t.
> 
> If you found it somewhat unbelievable that Zuko believes Sokka, allow me to remind you that Zuko canonically can’t read between the lines. See: believing Azula when she told him he could come home.
> 
> Also—that was SUPPOSED to be a morally grey decision of Sokka’s, okay? Don’t come at me in the comments.
> 
> Next up: could be a number of things. Zuko’s decision to quit SH? Angsty flashbacks? Silat class? Suki’s return? All of the above?


End file.
